Soldier 7 gets to smoke pot?
LOL - I wondered who would pick up on that first. No, he didn't, though fairly strong grass does grow in summer in the sidestreets around that area (erm..so I'm told
). One thing that did surprise me, reading this, was the number of times mention was made in Soviet reports of German assault troops being drunk, even for a dawn raid. It tends to contradict the cliched image of the Wehrmacht in action.
The map in the book is about a zillion times more detailed - pretty much hall by hall and house by house detail - even though some of the houses were holes in the ground by that stage.
Moving on with the narrative - I had a long session reading it last night and covered day 1 of the assault. The casualty rates were appalling - across the 5km front you have units on both sides losing, in one day, 25% of their active manpower, or 30% for some Soviet units - even 117% of one regiment's manpower were casualties (see if you can guess how that happened).
There appear to have been two key strategic buildings positioned near the front lines by the factory main halls - the Kommissarhaus (factory admin) and Apotheke. The Pioniers achieved surprise during their assault on the Apotheke by requesting no arty barrage to start so that they could crawl up, plant satchels on the walls and then detonate them at zero hour. They charged in and took the building from the shocked Russians very quickly, taking 45 prisoners.
My earlier statement that RO-Kommissarhaus is a map crying out to be made has been proved correct. The German attack against it failed on day one - if you see a photo of it you can probably guess why. It was built along the lines of medieval castle with metre-plus thick redbrick walls and surrounded by no real cover (except the trenches and craters). Any RO player on axis would look at the OH map and say, "ffffsshhh, that is going to be a hard cap".
The Germans had assault guns backing up the assault but they let them get well within Molotov and PTRD-plink range and lost three of them, as well as any realistic chance of storming the building that day. Noobs!
RO Players who moan about nade-spam would be well advised to read about a member of the factory militia, named Fedin, who was in the Kommissarhaus and grabbed a bagful of nades, ran out from the building and, covered by an SMG fired by his mate, Putirin, lobbed nades into the craters where the advancing Germans were taking cover. Gef. Ludwig Apmann and 4 other Panzer Pioniers being amongst those wounded in this assault. Eventually Fedin got hit too and staggered back to the building for first aid. A combination of acts like this and the Russian snipers must must have done quite some damage as the entire German force assaulting at that point withdrew.
At other points the Germans did better, advancing through gullies and trenches to take houses all the way down to the Volga, but, as a reader, I am guessing that they paid too high a price for the few hundred metres they gained and the old problem about not having infantry to hold the gains is going to resurface. They also had the Kommissarhaus sticking out like a thumb in the middle of their area of 'gains'.
Looknig at this in just the first day I wonder how the battle managed to drag on til January. The Russian 138th Rifle Div and the German 305th and 389th surely could not take much more of the kind of losses they suffered on day 1.
This is all the most general intro to what is in the book - I have mised out the pages about the problems of transporting an entire battalion by air, the comments about Russian Women snipers (though I thopught there were none in Stalingrad) and a lot of back-story of the units.
A later post might deal with the role of Major Gunyaga, in charge of the 768th Rifle Regiment of the 138th, who certainly does not come across as the typical Russian 'blood and guts' style of commander who wanted to lead from the front, even though the events of the day made sure that that is exactly where he ended up
It will be interesting to see whether the examples of extreme bravery from his CO, Colonel Lyudnikov, manage to put some fire into this 'reluctant hero'.